The Duke of Cumberland put his hands on his hips and stared fixedly at Hoare with his one good eye.
" What what? You call yourself Commander of a royal Duke, sir? I'll have you know that we royal Dukes are commanded by no man-except, of course, our father, the King."
Hoare held his breath. Was Cumberland jesting, or was he really displeased? He stood transfixed, awaiting his doom. The murmured voices within hearing fell silent.
"Haw! I've been waitin' to say that to somebody ever since Abercrombie told me about that yacht of yours. Then I remembered. Me brother Billy told me he'd put a Hoare into Royal Duke. Ought to be t'other way round, of course. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened, as me brother Wales would be the first to admit! Hee hee hee!"
The silent sycophants in the circle broke into their obliging laughter, and Hoare felt his face go red. He would have happily called another man out for that kind of remark, but… challenge Lieutenant General H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland? He summoned up a weak laugh of his own.
The weak laugh was cut short by a sharp poke in the ribs from the royal fingers, extended daggerlike.
"Hee hee hee!" said Royalty again. "Just my little joke. Seriously, my man, I've a fancy to inspect your little ship. Never had a chance while she was lyin' in… in…"
"Chatham, Your Highness," the Admiral supplied.
"Yes, of course. Chatham. Tomorrow, then, what what?" With their what-what's, His Majesty's sons had acquired at least one of their father's idiosyncrasies.
"Aye aye, sir," Hoare whispered, aghast. He himself had spent little more than twenty-four hours altogether aboard his new command. How was he to make her ready to show off to this royal villain in so short a time? He must shove off forthwith, Duke or no Duke. There was not a moment to lose.
Admiral Sir George Hardcastle had the well-deserved reputation of being a grim and a merciless man. Hoare had already discovered, however, that with respect to Hardcastle's portly daughter, he was neither grim nor merciless. Hoare now perceived the same exception in his Admiral's attitude toward royalty. Both departures from normal were understandable, Hoare thought. In the one case, it could be attributed to love; in the other, to fear. Thus, in the agonized day that was to follow, Admiral Hardcastle gave his subordinate no vestige of support.
"So, Captain Hoare," came a familiar voice at his elbow. "You are making your mark among the mighty, I see.
It was Eleanor Graves's friend, Miss Jane Austen, whom he had last encountered in Wells after both had happened to attend the ordination of Arthur Gladden, late Lieutenant of the late Vantage frigate.
"Well met, sir," she said. "Lady Hardcastle has been telling me more of your recent good fortune, of which I had known very little."
"You and Lady Hardcastle are acquaintances, then?" he asked.
"She is a connection of my close friend, Augusta Branson. I am her guest tonight. But tell me, sir: do you remember being introduced to Miss Anne Gladden on the happy occasion of her brother's ordination?"
"Indeed, I do, Miss Austen." Miss Anne was a classic beauty, blond, blue-eyed, sunny of nature, about nineteen, and very, very small. She would be little taller than Hoare's ward, Jenny.
"A very charming person," he said noncommittally.
She nodded thoughtfully. "Infinite riches in a little room," she observed.
"Pray why do you ask?" Hoare inquired.
"The subject came up," she said, smiled graciously, and went her way.
Before the perplexed Hoare escaped from the reception, Delancey stopped him to inform him with ill-suppressed glee that he was to warp Royal Duke from her present mooring to a more convenient spot at the lesser naval pier. It would be more convenient, that is, for the boarding of an awkward, lubberly gaggle of landsmen such as Cumberland and his entourage. This movement would have been routine enough for any other of His Majesty's ships. There would be no need to set even one of the brig's beautifully harbor-furled sails.
For Royal Duke, however, her crew and her new Commander, the maneuver made for a morning of public humiliation and private pain.
The performance the day before of Joy, the boatswain, should have warned him. Clay had already warned him that but for one or two, Hoare's crew knew no more about ship handling than so many of Portsmouth's brutes, those red, stumpy women who earned their bread by servicing sailors. Now he was to learn that while Mr. Clay clearly knew what orders to give them, the ship's people, while willing enough, had not the slightest notion of how to obey them.
Not one but both boats put over the side to tow the yacht slipped from their slings as they were lowered. The coxswain of one had forgotten to insert the plug in its bottom, and it quickly filled. Once the tow lines had been passed and the red-faced coxswains had attempted to set a stroke, matters got no better. The oarsmen knew no more of their duty than a bevy of schoolgirls. First, one caught a crab, then another. An oar went adrift.
At last, the yacht began to creep across the short distance to her berth, towing in turn Hoare's own tiny craft, her new tender. If a boat could look mischievous, Neglectful did. The sight began to catch the attention of nearby vessels, and jeering remarks began to pass having to do with "washerwomen," "farmers," "whore's delights," and worse. Echoes of these appellations, Hoare assured himself bitterly, bade fair to spread throughout the fleet and never die.
Perhaps confused by the barrage of insults, the coxswain of the larboard boat ran it afoul of his mate's, breaking one oar and sending still another adrift. The contemptuous laughter grew. The hapless Hoare stood on his command's quarterdeck, watching her first public performance before the crack sailors of the Royal Navy.
By God's grace, Clay had had the foresight to station men in Royal Duke's chains and at the tip of her bowspirit with fending poles. For just as she was gathering way, it became clear to Hoare at least that she was about to run aboard a smart brig, bow to bow.
"Sheer off!" came a cry from the brig. She was Niobe, 18. "Sheer off, ye gormless lubbers!"
Without audible orders, some of the other vessel's crew began to hang rolled hammocks over her side and pick up poles of their own. The two vessels neared each other like two knights tilting in a nightmare slow-motion tournament, their bowspirits aimed at each other like lances.
But, again by God's grace, Royal Duke's meager tonnage wrought to her benefit. Between them, the two crews boomed their vessels apart. Even the larboard boat avoided being crushed between the two hulls like a walnut. Only his neglected Alecto-lately Neglectful-towing astern, rammed her bowspirit, as if resentfully, into‹ Royal Duke's, stern sheets with a crunch and a shattering of Hoare's cabin window lights.
Once Hoare's wayward command had been laid at last alongside the pier, a gang of dockyard mateys took charge, mooring her and her disobedient tender in proper Navy fashion, and left her and her crew to sort themselves out as best they could. Hoare had to admit to himself that, cack-handed farmers though his people might be, they at least knew how to pretty their ship to a fare-thee-well. Obviously, he thought, that was all the seamanship the late Captain Oglethorpe had required of them.
Promptly at four bells of the forenoon watch, the Duke appeared at the entrance to the dock, accompanied by Admiral Sir George Hardcastle and a small glittering entourage. To his displeasure, Hoare saw that Captain Walter Spurrier was among them. In proper precedence, they crossed the brow connecting Royal Duke with the pier. That it was raining lightly would please no one in the inspecting party. Nor would the pitiful trill of the single boatswain's pipe they could summon up; Hoare could have done far better with his own instrument. The solitary side-boy was no boy at all but Lorimer, the wizened, smallest, and feeblest of Royal Duke's clerks. Hoare knew well he, Hoare, would be blamed.
Cumberland made no pretense to being a Naval person, but a martinet is a martinet, and he showed that he, like his brother Kent, knew the martinet trade backward and forward. With a gesture, Cumberland halted the thin twittering of the pipe. He barely acknowledged the salutes
of Hoare and Clay but stared at the little Lieutenant as though he were a bottled fetus and began his inspection.
At the sight of the brig's complement of green-uniformed Marines, the Duke stopped short.
"Who the hell are these? Or what?" Hoare had used the identical words when he first saw them, but where he could only summon a whisper, the Duke roared.
"Our Marine detachment, sir," Hoare replied.
"Marines wear red coats, you ass! By whose orders are these men out of uniform?"
"They are trained and equipped as riflemen, sir, and have been uniformed as such."
"By whose orders, I asked you! Are you deaf as well as dumb, sir?"
"Admiralty orders, may it please Your Royal Highness," Hoare said. This would be safe, he hoped.
"It does not please My Royal Highness," the Duke snarled. "That may be the way you sailors run your service, but, by God, you'd never get away with it in the army! Lobsters should be served cooked, not raw. Isn't that so, sir? What what? Isn't it, then?"
"Sir," Hoare said.
"Bah," said the Duke. "Black buttons, indeed. My word. They look like a batch of currants in a spoiled pudding."
Hoping the worst was over, Hoare accompanied H. R. H. down the even lines of Royal Duke's crew. Cumberland halted before one trio and looked down his nose.
"And what are these?" he barked.
He was looking at three reddish gnomes. Hoare had never seen these members of his family himself. They had hidden, or been hidden, from his sight. They made him believe he was host to figures from some obscure Celtic myth.
But Cumberland was obviously waiting for an answer.
"Topmen, sir," Hoare whispered wildly. "Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior. Dutchmen, all. They also serve as sappers and miners as required."
"Hmph," the Duke said, and passed on. To Hoare's relief, the Duke did not even notice Taylor as he passed her, perhaps because she had wisely put on a smocked shirt belonging to a larger shipmate. The shirt was a loose fit and obscured her breasts. Since her thick queue was no longer than some of her male shipmates', she gave no clue to mark her sex.
Hancock, the pigeon fancier, had not yet had time to move his birds or disguise their ungainly habitat. The man himself hovered before the ramshackle construction as if trying to hide it from the inspecting party, surrounded by the miasma stench of his breath. Spurrier pretended to gag.
"Good God," the Duke said. "What have we here? Captain of the ship's shambles?"
"Pigeons, sir," Hoare whispered.
"Pigeons? What for, man, eh? For a pye?" At the idea of a feed, Cumberland's heavy-lidded eyes almost gleamed.
"Er… no, Your Highness. Messenger pigeons. But we have laid out a small collation below, sir."
Before he clambered below through the open scuttle that Hoare indicated to him with a bow, Cumberland turned, hands on hips, to look about Royal Duke's deck.
"At least you have the decency to keep your guns polished," he admitted, but then, with a glance, resurveyed the crew he had just inspected.
"This pitiful little barge demeans her title. I shall recommend to me father that he have it renamed, if not sunk. Honey-Barge might suit, what what? Or Dustbin. Ya-as. 'H.M.S. Dustbin.' Hee hee hee."
Hoare knew the people in the neighboring vessels had missed no single word of this.
While the Admiral had not opened his mouth during the Duke's inspection, he had certainly been listening, for his face was purple. Silence did not come easily to flag officers, even in the presence of royalty.
"I shall speak with you later, Mr. Hoare," the Admiral grated as he passed.
Belowdecks with a few selected cronies-including Walter Spurrier, who commenced to snoop about Hoare's belongings-the Duke apparently found matters somewhat more to his liking. Among the dishes offered him as refreshment, he sighted a platter of sherried lobster meats, gleaming in the lamplight on the great cabin table before the stern windows.
"There. You see? Someone here knows the proper color for lobsters. Hee hee hee."
The Duke placed himself before the platter and began to feed. When he had emptied it completely, he turned to Hoare and grunted, "Well, man, at least you keep a good cook. Have him sent to me. I'll put him to use, by Jove. Ya-as."
He looked up from the empty platter through the hastily repaired stern window. Seeing Neglectful lying peacefully in the light rain behind Royal Duke, he grunted again, more forcefully.
"Like the looks of that little boat. Have her delivered to me in Plymouth. With yer cook. Ya-as."
With that, he belched and returned on deck. Spurrier lagged behind him.
"You go to sea in this little thing?" he asked. "Makes me want to spew just to think of it. Can't stand the water, y'know.
"Oh, and by the by, Hoare, stay away from the Nine Stones Circle, d'ye hear? If you should be found there at the wrong time, you'll get a welcome that might surprise you most unpleasantly."
With that, Spurrier turned and followed his master topside.
Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, departed Royal Duke without further ceremony, followed by his snickering entourage. He left her Commander alone on deck, shaken and sick at heart.
For Hoare, this first full day in command of a Naval vessel had dealt him a foul blow and one he had not anticipated. True, Royal Duke's battery was trivial. But at least, he had thought, she could go to sea if permitted and serve as a dispatch ship, if nothing else. Now he knew that he would not dare take her off soundings, if even so far. Her crew would be too seasick to go aloft. Besides, they would have no idea what to do when they got there.
He must berate someone; he needed a cat to kick. There being no cat aboard as yet, Clay would have to do. He was handy, was unable to kick back, and was smaller than Hoare, as well.
"May I ask, Mr. Clay," Hoare whispered as soon as he could get the hapless man below, "how-beginning with this morning's bungled performance… between the mooring and the dock-you contrived to disgrace your ship, your Commander, and yourself so completely?"
Clay's face reddened. "Our hands are untrained, sir," he said. "They are proficient enough at their trades and at ship's housekeeping, but they are totally ignorant of seamanship."
"And whose fault is that, may I inquire?"
Clay could look anywhere, it seemed, except at his Captain. "Only a few Royal Dukes, sir-Iggleden, Joy, the woman Taylor-have ever been to sea at all. None of the standing officers."
"What? Surely…" Hoare could summon no words.
"I could not believe it myself, sir, when I first joined her. But when I discovered that the ships's people had no notion of how to cast off, let alone make sail, and when I began to take the standing officers to task for such neglect of their duty, they assured me that it was actually required of them. In fact, I was shown a document among the ship's papers in which Admiral Abercrombie explicitly forbade her Commander to take her to sea under any circumstances.
"Even worse, sir, I was forbidden to allow any of the crew aloft, even in harbor, unless they were fitted with lubber's harnesses. Virtually every man jack and woman jill might as well have been clerks in some city office. That's what several of them had been, sir, after all," he had the courage to add.
Hoare felt his sacrificial lamb beginning to elude him.
"Instead of using your undoubted creative powers, Mr. Clay," he rasped, "to dream up reasons for having disobeyed my orders… to prepare Royal Duke for an inspection, by royalty, at that, you might better have applied it to finding ways to carry them out."
He cleared his broken throat. He knew very well he was being most unfair, but he needed a cat to kick, and Clay had to be it.
"By the evidence of this morning, your excuse must certainly be true, although you can imagine how it reflects on your own performance
… Nevertheless, it leads me to wonder how you managed to bring Royal Duke around from Chatham and down the Channel to Portsmouth."
Mr. Clay hung his head and stood mute. That was all any junior dared do
.
"Well, Mr. Clay?"
"Our passengers, sir," Clay said at last.
"What?"
"Our passengers. A draft of men for Niobe, under a midshipman, with their own petty officers. The mid in charge of the draft showed me his orders."
"Which were?"
"To place himself and his men under my command, sir, for the duration of our passage to Portsmouth. I issued my orders to them, and the Niobes brought her here.
"Besides, most of our own people were incapacitated by seasickness as soon as we passed Greenwich, sir," Clay added.
"My God," Hoare said. "Do you mean to say that by ordering this poor mismanned barky to sea the Admiralty deliberately put her reputation at risk?"
"It appears so, sir," Mr. Clay said. "Of course, they could not have foreseen the Duke's contribution of this morning."
"What did Their Lordships think it would do to her- our-credibility in the fleet?"
"I can hardly say, sir."
Hoare lay long awake that night, lying snug in the swinging bed Captain Oglethorpe had left behind him and reviewing the painful course of the day and the blunders that had preceded it. How he himself had blundered again and again: swanning about that Channel gale in the then-named Neglectful-"Neglectful," indeed! — instead of standing ready to board Royal Duke immediately upon her being sighted off Spithead; paying court to Eleanor Graves when he should have been questioning the Weymouth watch; playing games with Abel Dunaway when he should have been pressing him for facts about his smuggling trade.
Above all, he should have fended off, somehow, Cumberland's ill-starred inspection. If he had kept at his duty and stayed in Dorchester himself to track down the Captains' killers, he would never have been commanded to the reception. Instead, he had let Taylor's message entice him back to Portsmouth, where Cumberland had his chance to torment him. Damn Taylor; damn Cumberland.
Come what might, he would never turn his own beloved little Alecto over to Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. Never. He would scuttle her first.
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